“MARY’S NOT-SO-TAME SONG”

Luke 1:46-55


PART ONE
Most of us know the story well – a teenage girl, a virgin, engaged to Joseph, but pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit. We call it the virgin birth.

This baby causing her stretch marks & sitting on her bladder is God. The new-born nursing at her breasts is the Eternal Creator of all things, including the warm milk in his mouth.

Mary lived as a mama to God-made-flesh while bowing in her heart to the King of kings & Lord of lords. She knew that she had been the site of a holy Miracle, the habitation of Divinity within her virgin womb.

It began something like this. The angel Gabriel told Mary that she was with child by the power of the Holy Spirit. He also told her that her baby was to be name Jesus, because (as Matthew tells us in his gospel) he will save his people from their sins. Mary has a Savior growing in her belly.

Mary’s baby is the long-awaited Messiah – think Savior – of Israel! Help is on the way. Deliverance is coming. God is re-visiting his people.

BUT not in the way that Israel expected. Not a political Messiah but a spiritual Messiah to free them from their sin. This baby was coming to deal with humanity’s ‘sin problem.’ It’s Frank Sinatra ‘I’ll do it my way’ problem.

After this angelic birth announcement Mary ran to her aged relative Elizabeth – barren, elderly, post-menopausal – but miraculously pregnant herself. Elizabeth calls her blessed.
And Mary bursts into a song. What I’m calling her not-so-tame song. Words of spiritual & social revolution roll off her virgin lips. READ LUKE 1:46-55.

In a sermon he preached on this song in London on December 17, 1933 Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: this song of Mary’s is the most passionate, most heated, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here. None of the sweet, sugary, or childish tones that we find so often in our Christmas hymns, but a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of the world, of God’s power and of the powerlessness of men. These are the tones of the prophetic women of the Old Testament: Deborah, Judith, Miriam, coming alive in the mouth of Mary.

On this Christmas morning I want us to view this song through the window of humility – for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant (1:48). Humility. First in Mary. Second in Jesus. Third of God’s great reversal.

Humility in Mary
The yet-to-be wife of a carpenter sings this song – the poor, working man’s wife; insignificant to all but significant to God. Appointed to be the mother of the Savior of the world.

Not because of some remarkable accomplishment in her life – she hadn’t lived long enough, or great piety, or virtue. Only because God’s gracious will is to love the humble and lowly.

Her fiancée, her Joseph, a simple blue collar carpenter with rough, sand paper-like hands. Part of the framing crew putting up houses on the corner Juniper & Territorial in Canby. This humble working man’s fiancée makes her place in history as the mother of my Lord, as Elizabeth puts it (1:43).

We learn a wonderful thing here about God – he is not ashamed to be cast with the humble & poor. And neither should we. God loves the lost, the forgotten, the insignificant, the outcasts, the weak, and the broken. He feels at home with the humble.

Mary’s humility expresses itself as I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said (1:38). Take my life, Lord, my body, my reputation, my coming marriage, my place in the community. May her words & her heart behind them be ours as well.


PART TWO

Humility in Jesus
Mary with child, by the Holy Spirit, is how God splits history in half. This is the turning point of the Grand narrative – creation then fall then Israel then Jesus followed by us, the church. A new ordering of all things on earth begins here in Mary’s womb. The Kingdom of God is unleashed.

God himself, the Lord and Creator of all things, becomes little and helpless, here in a corner, in seclusion, unnoticed, he enters the world. This is humility like nothing else in our world.

Think of George W. Bush going from President of the United States to President of the Knight School PTA. Think of Bill Gates going from running Microsoft to running Canby Disposal. Think of all-pro running back Shaun Alexander of the Seahawks going from the NFL to the Kyllo family’s annual football game on Christmas Day. Think of Rick Warren leaving his multi-thousand member mega church in southern California to join our staff as visitation pastor.

There is no human parallel that even begins to match the humility of God becoming man.

The ultimate perfecto picture of humility in our world comes in Jesus when the Almighty Eternal Creator God makes his home in his skin & bones.

This tells us something wonderful about God – he is not ashamed to be cast with the humble and poor AND he’s wiling to humble himself to become a piece of his creation. To be humble is to be God-like.

Humility of the Great Reversal
By Great Reversal I refer to the way we experience the world around us when God conceives new life in us.

In 1:51-53 we read that God scatters those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He brings down the rulers from their thrones & lifts up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things & sends the rich away empty.

These words roll off of Mary’s tongue like flames of fire. This is not a nice, sugar-coated, tame song. Revolution is on the horizon. Like Aslan, God is on the move.

The first will be last & the last will be first, is how Jesus says it. God & the humble & the hungry are exalted. The proud & the rulers & the rich are brought down.

This is a picture of the coming Kingdom of God that we experience in part now & in full when Christ returns. Salvation is not just about forgiveness of sins. It stretches out to include justice & mercy for the disenfranchised as well.

Pride, power & wealth should be held lightly. If not, they become thick barriers to a relationship with God. Humility before God is the pathway that God travels into our hearts. And out of our hearts into the hearts of our broken world.

As Christ followers we have a kingdom to participate in and a King to worship. Ours is a world large with creation and wonder, history and salvation. In Christ we are joyful participants in what has been and is yet to come. How?

By confessing our belief in the truth of this story of Jesus. By inviting Jesus into our story, our life, as our Savior & Lord. By humbling ourselves before God & others. By serving God, the downtrodden & the deprived.

Let us sing with Mary this Christmas morning, for (God my Savior) has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. My soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savor. Amen.